Pages

Friday, 19 February 2010

"Please, I just want to go home" *sobs*

"@simperman #ff @louisejones_x She's going to have a lively blog after last night's adventure."

So er you know I was bursting with a ridiculous amount of excitement Wednesday night and yesterday morning about seeing Ant & Dec? Well after the 10th hour at Pinewood Studios that excitement had receded and was replaced by a big fat feeling of anxious, closely followed by sheer panic and a lot of swearing...

My Mum, like me, believes that things happen for a reason and also believes bad things happen in threes. The morning started off okay, we were on time, organised and were dead excited about it all. Then the first bad thing happened. One of Mum's friends who was meant to come phoned and said she'd had a bad allergic reaction to something overnight and couldn't come, so that sucked. Then Mum tried diverting her work phone but apparently the function isn't on there, why it doesn't baffles me but there you go, so Mum was likely to get a ton of calls throughout the day, which is bad enough for her but worse for me as my Mum has a very loud 'phone voice' and her ringtone is awful. Oh and yes the third bad thing to happen in a hour, it started to rain...a lot...and our hair was perfect...fab. 'But that's three bad things to happen early' I hear you cry. Well yes that's the theory, but theory decided to ambush us with destruction in a number of ways, I even had my lucky bracelet on! Fat lot of good that was.

After an hour of faffing around deciding what to wear I was finally ready and me and Mum were on our way to the station to meet the other 6 who were already there. Got a great deal on train tickets, was only £1 for the kids (because we were obviously kids for transport and adults for the show, brilliant being 16 and noone can tell how old you actually are mwahaha) Jumped on a train to Liverpool Street, then the Metropolitan Line all the way to Uxbridge. Things were now going really well. Found taxis at Uxbridge who took us straight to Pinewood Studios and we were there at 2.30pm...3 hours early...right. Oh well better early than late. A man at reception came out and said "You're too early" Well yes I think we gathered that Mr 'you look a lot like my Physics teacher' man. "Well is there anywhere we can go?" "No." "Oh thank you so much for your help" #clearlynosarcasmintended. If it was up to us 'kids' we would have been quite happy sitting on a bench at Pinewood chatting and nomming on our Marks & Spencer's picnic, but oh no, "Let's go for a walk!" So we were dragged out of Pinewood by my Mum and her best friend to walk...with no purpose...and no sense of direction. Ronan had a Satnav thingy on his phone thank God which told us where we were going, and we found A PUB. Marvellous. So we sat in there for an hour talking, laughing at the sex toy machine in the toilets and trying our best to not get drooled on by Fang from Harry Potter, well Lacey the dog, that looked a lot like Fang from Harry Potter.

We found a shortcut on the way back, typical, and got back to the studios just in time to see other people arriving and starting to queue. Now this is where it gets tense. These tickets are first come first serve, you don't have seat numbers, and you can tell a tv recording regular (us) from a first timer by the way they queue and treat the others. Everyone is your enemy. You automatically dislike everyone. You stare everyone down. It's hilarious but so sad. As cars were coming in the ushers had to send them back out as the gate to the car park wasn't opening till 4.45pm, and it was only 4.15pm now, so naturally we laughed at them being sent away while we queued at the front happily. As 4.45pm came and the gates opened, it looked like the cavalry arrived as all the ushers in yellow jackets came out in a bundle, and all the 'public transport' lot gave each other sneaky looks, mostly at their feet, to see if they were gonna make a run for it through the gate. Well as soon as one posh snobby woman did it started a stampede, literally. Everyone clutching their tickets legged it towards the gates to the ticket people, and me being small managed to push past everyone to the front again, WIN. We were directed into another queue, only to be sent to another which was done for priorities, oh yeah, we were priority.

Then it rained. A LOT. Thankfully we had umbrellas but that precipitation still soaks you, not good. After half an hour of queuing Martin the SRO ticket person little gay man with a big voice I love arrived. I shouted "Martinnnnn! Nice to see you!" which started some glares my way as I was obviously tight with him. I'm not. But I pretended. When it was our turn to get wristbands he said "Oh just four of you? You have six tickets, where are the other two? Dead? Fuck em I didn't like em anyway. Now go to Ian and he'll tell you a story." Hahahaha oh I LOVE him. Well Ian, whoever he was, didn't tell us a story but a woman who looked remarkably like @salihughes gave me my wristband and said my hair looked gorgeous. Score, nice hair even in the rain, Ant & Dec wouldn't be able to resist me. We were directed into a marquee out of the rain where there were seats, so we sat waiting until the next leg of this event. By this time my feet were frozen and wet, so I ended up sticking them in the crease of my knee to warm them up, it worked. We were meant to be taken to the studio at 6.45pm but they were delayed and clearly not organised as us purple wristband people weren't called up till 7.15pm. Oh well it will still be over by 10pm right? *stares* Finally at 7.30pm we were all seated, in FAB seats, bang in the middle 5 rows up. Brilliant! Now we were getting SO excited. The set looked good and it was warrrrrrm, oh I've never appreciated warmth so much in my life. It took a long time getting seated but finally recording started at 8, Ant & Dec appeared in all their glory (minus Ant's shocking hairstyle) and we were clapping and cheering away. I'm not gonna tell you a lot about the actual show, you can see that for yourself next Saturday. But I will tell you that it could have been a LOT better with a lot more variety, and the families they chose were quite clearly from some sort of drama school, Ant & Dec got annoyed with them by the end never mind us, they were SO cocky. Minutes passed, more clapping past, more breaks passed, HOURS passed when Kiera looked at her watch and said it was 11pm. Oh SHIT. Now we were bored out our brains, tired and needed a wee BAD. This was meant to finish at 10pm, it was an hour wait and deep down I was scared we were gonna miss trains, but I always worry about things like that so let it pass. We left th..."Woah hold up Louise you haven't said anything about the warm up guy." Oh what Andy? I want to strangle him, slice him with a small grater and feed him to pigeons. There you go. (He's the warm up guy for Dancing on Ice too which I'm seeing on Sunday, someone will have to restrain me)

We were back at the main entrance at midnight, called for a taxi and I was now having visions of everything stopping and us having to walk the streets of London late at night, but that couldn't happen, could it? *stares harder* We were back at Uxbridge at 12.15am, and were welcomed by silence and one tube...stopping at Wembley. Oh shit x1000. But that was okay, they'll be trains from Wembley *gulp* We sat on that tube for 15mins before it started, and now Mum started to stress, causing me to stress, causing EVERYONE to stress. This was a time for Twitter. Mum didn't even bat an eyelid when I said I was gonna ask Twitter for help on my phone, an obvious sign of 'We need help NOW' The tube started moving at 12.25am and I was frantically asking for help from Twitter. Thankfully @simperman was on the case and found the last trains and buses from Wembley back to Stratford. We were utterly screwed. The last trains and buses were around 12.50am and there was no way we were gonna make that. As we pulled into Wembley we leaped off the train and scrambled to the exit to try and make last trains, it didn't work. Everywhere was eerily empty and the buses didn't go anywhere we wanted to go. One of the workers said there were no more connections anywhere now and then left us. 2 women with 6 kids and he left us stranded. Twat. We left the station and ended up walking up Olympic Way in the rain and dark, just in the hope of finding someone to help us or a bus to take us somewhere we knew. Nothing. It was like everyone had disappeared. It was 1.15am now, we were all shivering with cold, soaked through and scared shitless. We didn't know what to do. So we walked back to the station where a big group of workers were about to start work on the tracks. My Mum was close to tears now and ran up to these men literally begging for help. I have SO much respect for these workers now, they work all through the night and they are genuine lovely men who helped us out so much. One of them took my Mum to the office thing where a man was still monitoring the station, and bless his little heart tried so hard to help. He confirmed there were no more trains and the only buses we could take were ones going to Hainault, over 40 mins away from where we lived and would take two hours on the bus. We were all in tears now just not knowing what the hell to do. This man was absolutely lovely and even offered to put us all up in his hotel room till the first train at 5am (!), either that or we got our own room in Premier Inn next door. By now we were all in this office in the warm, all the works rushing around thinking up ways to get us home and telling us it was all gonna be alright. 1.30am it was now and Mum had rung my Dad to tell him what was happening. After a few phonecalls the lovely train man had managed to bag us a huge taxi to take us all the way home, for £100. Mum didn't know what to do, that was SO much money but we were all in such a state it was our last resort. I ended up breaking the silence through tears going to the man "Please I just want to go home" Which pushed him to get a deal for £90, it was cheaper at least.

The taxi was booked and we waited 20mins outside for it. On our own in the even more freezing and wet night, mysterious cars passing and staring at us, and pervy horrible men trying to talk to us, not to mention the van that skidded and did a 360 nearly crashing into all of us. It was AWFUL. I ended up singing 'Keep Holding On' from Glee to keep me calm. The taxi arrived and we bundled in, 8 of us in a 6 man taxi, three of us including me squeezed in the back, 3 in the middle, one on the floor and one in the front. Finally we were on our way home. After a few tweets and texts I crashed out in the corner of the taxi and woke up at 3am, just as we passed the 'Oakwood Avenue' sign, we were HOME. We shuffled into our house to my Dad who bless him had got up and was watching the Olympics, with money for the taxi man and hot drinks at the ready. I collapsed into his arms and vowed never to go to Pinewood or London late at night again. I will. But at that moment I just wanted to stay at home for the rest of my life. At 4am I finally got into bed after being ill from all the kerfuffle and sticking my feet under the shower, my toes had gone all wrinkly and white like when you're in the bath for too long.

I fell into bed with a hot water bottle and just fell asleep. Roll on Dancing on Ice, IN THE CAR. X